


we all fall down

by magicandlight



Series: The States [8]
Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: Civil War, Family, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-03
Updated: 2018-05-03
Packaged: 2019-05-01 21:07:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,943
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14529198
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/magicandlight/pseuds/magicandlight
Summary: No one is left unaffected by the Civil War.It's called the war between brothers for a reason.





	we all fall down

Ginny writes letters. Occasionally, on good days, David hears her humming the same songs she had once played on her violin- a violin that's hundreds of miles away in Philadelphia. She takes on all the house chores just to have something to occupy her mind when she isn't fighting.

Sometimes, Jackson will join her as she does the chores, silently taking half the work. Sometimes, he encourages Ginny to play the piano. Sometimes, Ginny does.

Sometimes, Ginny's letters are returned unopened, and they all pretend not to see the devastation on her face.

Sometimes, the corner of a letter will stick out of her pocket, the ink smudged by fingertips and tears. 

☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆

Scarlett is too still these days. It's unnatural, because David has always associated his sister with vibrancy and passion.

He is always uneasy when she does it, and sometimes he finds himself watching her, making sure her chest is rising and falling.

Sometimes, he catches Daniel doing it too.

☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆

Everyone knows where Timothy goes- disappearing at night and not coming back for hours or days. Well, everyone, it seems, but Jackson.

He might keep the pendant tucked into his shirt, but they can all see the chain.

They all know that it isn't Timothy's state seal on that pendant.

(The first time Josh says "sleeping with the enemy" and "Kendall" in the same sentence is the last time he does so.)

☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆

Evangeline has shed her former self like a snake sheds its skin. David believes her when she whispers threats and promises. The first time she had mouthed off at Jackson and he'd slapped her for it, they'd all frozen in place.

And Evangeline had looked up, and quietly reminded Jackson that Ginny wasn't the only one with the blood of an empire thrumming in her veins. And then she had stood with quiet dignity and walked away. And she had never retaliated. Not until Jackson had dared to think he would ever be allowed to slap Drew for his insolence.

The next day at breakfast, the slim blade of rapier was at Jackson's throat. And Evangeline had told him he could hit her all he liked, but that if he touched Drew again she was going to gut him like a pig. Jackson had smiled at her and said he didn't doubt it.

David knows that Evangeline will never forget, that she will remember every single slap and slight.

David thinks that Evangeline is biding her time like a true Frenchwoman- waiting until Jackson is  _down, weak, exposed_  to use the razor-sharp rapier under her bed.

☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆

Austin hides behind a facade of disinterest and boredom.

Austin thinks he's good at reading people, at hiding his emotions.

David has  _years_  on him, however. He's seen the brotherly fondness Austin has for Evangeline, the look he gets when Addison writes him letters, the way he carefully responds to each one.

David saw the horror in Austin's eyes when Carmen told him about little Nevada and Arizona, running off to become soldiers.

☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆

Flora has grown confident, and with that confidence comes surety.

 _She has feelings for Scarlett_ , David realizes one day when Flora gives Scarlett an orange blossom.

She questions Jackson's authority and attempts to comfort Scarlett on behalf of those feelings.

The girl that hid behind Ginny's skirts is gone.

☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆

Caden fluctuates between the extremes of exhaustion and high on adrenaline.

The only time it seems to balance out into calmness is when he's with Ginny or Ev.

It had taken a while to work out the _why_.

Caden knows exactly what David has figured out, and trusts that he will keep his mouth shut.

☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆

Josh goes out of his way to be nice to Scarlett, and honestly, he couldn't be more obvious about how he feels.

David doesn't know which is funnier- Scarlett's bafflement or the fact that Daniel actually thinks Josh has a chance of getting into their sister's pants. (David considers telling him a few times, but decides that it's Scarlett's secret to tell.)

☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆

Drew has gotten excellent at disappearing.

Because Ev might protect him, but there is only so much she can do. She can't be there all the time.

Usually, when he turns up, it's with one of the female states. Smart move, considering Jackson tends to avoid making himself look bad in front of the girls.

☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆

David barely recognizes his brother these days.

He barely recognizes himself, sometimes.

They are twins. They are  _forever_. One doesn't go where the other can't follow.

Daniel lays out battle strategies and maps and David feels sick.

Sometimes, he wonders what did they do when they turned against their family. Once, they had turned against their father and called it a  _revolution_.

Then, it had felt right.

Now, they turn against their father and it is called a Civil War.

Now, it feels like betrayal.

☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆

☆★☆★☆★☆★☆★☆★

★★★★★★★★★★★★

Wes has not talked in two weeks. Sometimes, Del wonders if he's becoming mute, and then he'll start talking again. The cycle of silence and speaking never ends.

Connie has restitched the gaping wound on his ribs three times, but it keeps reopening.

He doesn't sleep much, but then, none of them really do these days.

★★★★★★★★★★★★

Brooke is reaching too much.

She doesn't seem to care she has limitations- she's fighting and cooking and repairing uniforms and cleaning and doing parts of Alfred's work and babysitting and a million other things.

The only times she ever smiles are with Nicky or with Will.

★★★★★★★★★★★★

Nicky is busy with the battles and the added responsibility of making sure Brooke doesn't do stupid things like chug an entire pot of Turkish coffee (again), or get so sleep deprived she falls asleep standing up and gives herself a concussion against the kitchen floor (again). And then there is his promise to Connie- that he would watch over both of her siblings.

No matter how bad it gets, Nicky never lets the battles make him bitter, and Del can respect that. She never lets on that she knows that Nicky's been using a little of his talent to make the garden bloom out of season, even when Adam is perpetually confused by the fact the violets outside his window are still blooming in October.

(Really, how Adam hasn't noticed that Nicky is head-over-heels for him is ridiculous.)

★★★★★★★★★★★★

Cam is fracturing under the pressure of state leader.

He's exhausted from all the battles and taking over half of Alfred's work.

He fainted once, and when he came to, he just begged her not to tell Monty.

_I don't want him to worry._

★★★★★★★★★★★★

Sam is the one who realizes that they are at war with _their siblings_  first.

Siblings that have the ability to destroy them, expose them, to hit where it would hurt the most.

She is the one who creates the wards around the house.

Del thinks that it hurt all of them a little to see the magic rippling throughout the Philadelphia house, sealing out their wayward brothers and sisters.

Sam doesn't go to battles that Jackson may be at. The first time she met him in battle, Del had seen it.

She'd seen the way he'd grinned at said  _little Samantha, I would think Alfred wouldn't let you at all alone anymore, knowing what happened all those years ago._

Sam is silent the way home.

And then- "He shares Alfred's memories, Adela. He knows  _everything_ that Alfred knew, Del."

★★★★★★★★★★★★

Kendall is good at disappearing, but he's not quite so talented at hiding where he's been.

He really thinks that none of them noticed him raiding the medical supplies, or that he took a box of Tim's things down from the attic.

Del hides her smile behind her mug.

"You might want to cover that up." She says, and laughs when Kendall claps a hand to his neck before she can say what she's talking about.

★★★★★★★★★★★★

Connie doesn't like fighting.

She helps in the ways she can- takes care of Alfred when he's bedridden, patches up the states with steady hands, maintains the wards.

Del has seen her leaning against the wall, head in her hands after a long night with Alfred.

She has seen the devastation when Connie can't patch them up.

And Del can remember the day Addy had bled out on the coffee table despite three rolls of bandages and Connie had screamed _is this all I can do? Patch you all up and wait for the day I can't anymore?_

★★★★★★★★★★★★

Mindy left to fight with her men at the very beginning, when they'd first started to notice her body growing rapidly to accommodate the war.

Sometimes, Del wonders if she should have stopped her.

She sees Mindy at battles, fighting beside her men, who will never know that the young soldier beside them is their home personified, come to stand with them.

★★★★★★★★★★★★

Foster only cares about four things- his soldiers, Alfred, the youngest territories, and Sam.

Here's the thing: Sam doesn't need him to care about her.

But Foster continues on, trying to shelter the territories, trying to take care of Alfred, fighting with his men, and always,  _always_  trying to look after Sam, even in the smallest ways.

Del wonders if he does it out of a sense of duty for all the years Sam took care of him, or if it's something else.

★★★★★★★★★★★★

Monty worries about Cam constantly. Well, worries about all of them, but worries about Cam most of all.

They have a screaming match in the sitting room one night about Cam's recklessness and everyone is forced to pretend they didn't hear it.

Cam gets shot at a battle and Monty sits at his bedside all day with a clenched jaw and worried eyes.

There's no winning, really- Cam is worried about Monty when comes to the battles, Monty worries when he stays home.

★★★★★★★★★★★★

Callie has a touch of Lora's ruthlessness in her. The Confederates are traitors in her eyes, and that's that.

There was something wild about her the day she fought Austin at one of the battles- punching and kicking and scratching until Caden was there to drag Austin off and Del was holding Callie back.

She has the same glimmer of power around her the way Ginny and Brooke used to, like a promise that one day she'll be strong. 

★★★★★★★★★★★★

Del always feels bad for Nate. 

It is one thing for West to split from Ginny and rise to statehood in this war. 

It's an entirely different thing for Nate to bear the title of the battle-born state on his too-skinny, too-young shoulders. 

When he runs away to joining the Union Army, Del sits in the hallway as Lora tells Alfred. 

The sound of Alfred's scream and the way he'd punched a hole in the wall in anger and grief will haunt her the rest of her days. 

★★★★★★★★★★★★

Addison has lost six lives since Bleeding Kansas began.

She has bled out _six_ times, and each time, it wrecked Alfred a little more. 

The second time, the violence in her land had carved a line down her cheek that would eventually scar over. 

Her body is a mess of scars by the time she gets her statehood. 

Alfred is too sick for the travel to accept Addison's star, so Cam and Del go with her. 

Politicians flinch away as she signs her statehood papers and accepts the star. They flinch away from the scars slashed over her bare arms and the bandages hiding open wounds, away from the messy stitches Cait had put in when they'd been desperate to stop the bleeding. 

Addison does not acknowledge their discomfort. She stands there in her white dress with a halo of sunflowers on her head and her earth-brown eyes and never apologizes or attempts to hide what this war has cost her. 

★★★★★★★★★★★★

On the other hand, the war has dragged Caleb out of his hate for Addison. 

He'd never liked her much- she had been born from the territory taken from him, after all, and Addy had always needed so much attention with her hemophilia and age. 

No matter how much he hated Addy though, he'd never wished her dead, and there's some sort of camaraderie created out of seeing your sister bleeding out on the couch while they try to make the blood stop. They'd all been so focused on applying pressure and trying to stitch up the wounds that they hadn't noticed Caleb until he started to get hysteric. 

After that, it was a rare sight to see Caleb without Addison following behind like a shadow, little hand held tight in Caleb's. 

★★★★★★★★★★★★

Scott misses Ginny, but he can't forgive her or even sympathize with her. 

He never talks about her. Kendall tried once, and Scott had verbally eviscerated him until Wes had looked at Scott like he was no better than the Confederacy and told him to  _get the fuck off his high horse and stop acting like he had any claim to Elizabeth at all_.

Scott hadn't replied. 

Wes had snorted. _Some best friend you are_. 

★★★★★★★★★★★★

Tyler was bright and happy and always laughing as a kid, and Del thinks it'd be a tragedy if he loses that in this war.

He doesn't know when to stop giving- soldiers, food, supplies. 

There is something painfully familiar about seeing Tyler and Mindy and Oliver curled together under ratty army-issue blankets, and it takes a few moments to remember when four brand new states had huddled together after marching in the cold for miles upon miles. 

★★★★★★★★★★★★

Charlie declares herself a pacifist with a very un-pacifistic fire in her eyes. 

She tears through Austin's old room and drags out all of his books on medicine and healthcare and then does the same thing to the library. 

She teaches herself anatomy and physiology. She practices suturing on peaches and oranges, and learns how to create tourniquets. 

Five months later, she joins the nursing corps. 

★★★★★★★★★★★★

Michael seems to have made an unsteady truce with Cordelia to keep their little section of states safe. 

It's something of a relief to know she doesn't have to worry too much about the midwest, that if something is wrong Michael will either raise hell or take care of it himself. 

Del makes the mistake of asking once if there was anything besides mutual respect and siblings between Michael and Cordelia. 

"Don't be ridiculous," Michael responds, rolling his eyes. 

★★★★★★★★★★★★

Cordelia has never had a reason to be afraid of anything. 

She didn't grow up with the threat of starvation or the looming danger of possible permanent death. 

She grew up in an independent country, secure in her own immortality. 

She's lived through two wars before this, and even those weren't enough to scare her. 

And yet, here she is, with Cassidy in her arms, terrified of the possibility that this time she might not come back. 

★★★★★★★★★★★★

At first, she sees the way Will looks at Brooke and thinks her brother's an idiot. 

And then she sees the way Brooke looks back, and decides they're both idiots, and they need to stop this flirting-but-never-serious thing they're doing before they kill everyone from overexposure to sexual tension. 

Del saw how utterly wrecked Brooke was when she came back from Antietam, and the way Will hovers over her after that, and suddenly it makes sense. 

Will liked her, and Brooke liked him back, but they're both too scared to admit that seriously, so they flirt, and they tease, but they never do anything about it. 

Del's half-afraid they'll just stay in that almost-state forever, but then there's Gettysburg. 

Dear god, Gettysburg is hell. 

But if there was one good thing that came out of that battle, it's Will and Brooke, and the quiet joy on her brother's face when Brooke smiles at him. 

★★★★★★★★★★★★

Oliver has a talent for fighting that reminds her too much of the Carolinas, or Scott. 

Del tries not to think about it. 

She tries not to look at Oliver and see the little boy who'd held a calf in his arms, or who'd slept in the barn when his cows were sick. 

★★★★★★★★★★★★

Whatever had gone down with Sam, Adam knows about it. 

There's no other explanation for Adam's quiet rage towards Jackson for whatever he'd insinuated at that battle. 

More than once, Del has caught Adam staring blankly at the wall stars no one can bear to take down, at those first thirteen stars signed in messy ink. 

★★★★★★★★★★★★

Cassidy always brings to mind that Emily Brontë quote- the one about the wild, wicked slip of a girl that burns too bright for this world. 

Michael had once joked that whatever god made Cass knocked over a jar of mischief and a tin of trouble into her, and no matter what the other states believed, it seemed like an apt comparison. 

Del wonders about the hell that girl is going to raise when she's older. 

★★★★★★★★★★★★

Riley has always been quiet, but this war has made him even more so. 

He looks far too serious for fifteen. 

He is too young to be worried about making sure little Helena is in bed and that Emily's just hiding (not running away like her older siblings) and that Aidan stays out of trouble. 

The price of wars, it seems, is childhoods. 

★★★★★★★★★★★★

Del watches Alfred sleep fitfully, bandages already turning red, and then thinks of her siblings, of the eleven territories and wonders if their family will survive this. 

She wonders if they haven't already permanently ripped apart the union. She wonders what that means for Alfred, for Sera, for all of them.

Mostly though, she wonders if her wayward siblings are happy, if this god-forsaken war was worth it to them.


End file.
